Monday, July 10, 2017

Staunton, July 10 – During less than
half a day’s visit to Yekaterinburg, Vladimir Putin displayed his almost complete
ignorance of the officials he himself has appointed, the state of medicine and
other public services there and the real reason a firm hasn’t paid back wages
rather than the one he or those around him have chosen to suggest.

That is because
Putin’s mistakes highlight “the crisis in the system of administration” in
Russia, a crisis, the Yekaterinburg commentator says, everyone “can see with
his or her own eyes.” It was all too clear today, Shaburov continues, that
Putin views Sverdlovsk oblast not as it is or as its people know it to be but
in a unique and highly distorted way.

To make
his case, the commentator points to the following instances that appeared in
the regional media:

First, Putin mispronounced the last name of the head of the
oblast, Yevgeny Kuyvashev, even though he has served in that post for five
years and before that was presidential plenipotentiary for the Urals Federal
District. The Kremlin leader quite distinctly and quite incorrectly put the
stress on the wrong syllable.

Second, Putin couldn’t remember the name of the person who
heads the fourth largest city of the country and confused the titles and names
of those in charge, obviously mixing up in his own mind the real city head – it
has no mayor – and the head of the oblast, Yevgeny Royzman, an independent
politician whom the Kremlin leader didn’t name.

Third, Putin told city officials to improve medical care
for the population given complaints about it that the Kremlin has received from
the population.But there is one problem
he doesn’t seem to be aware of: “There are almost no municipal medical
institutions in Sverdlovsk anymore.” His own optimization program has closed
all but one and transferred authority to the oblast.

And fourth, Putin told officials to press the managers of
a local factory to pay the backwages of workers, again on the basis of complaints
he has received. But he doesn’t appear to know that the firm, pressed by his
own siloviki, has been driven into court-approved bankruptcy and thus has no
funds to do so.

Putin likes to style himself “an
effective manager” just like he has referred to Stalin. But in less than four
hours in a single city, the Kremlin leader was able to prove conclusively that
he is neither effective nor a manager but rather someone with enormous power
who acts with little or no information and thus is not someone in whom anyone
should be placing confidence.